


A Strong Name

by yowhyy



Category: Spooks | MI-5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:41:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25767607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yowhyy/pseuds/yowhyy
Summary: Ben always made his mother so proud.
Kudos: 2





	A Strong Name

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for series 6 through to 7.
> 
> I love Ben Kaplan, and wish he had been a more fleshed out character. Here’s a look at what his life before the service may have been like.

He is named for his grandfather, Benjamin - a strong name, his mother thinks, a manly name. He becomes her man, her rock, when there is just the two of them in their small London flat. He is only small, but knows how to make his mother laugh, how to dry her eyes when strange men knock on the door and call threats through the letterbox.

She hesitates on his first day of school, walking there with hand firmly clasped around his, pausing at the school gate. He smiles at her, that lovely smile, and she kisses him on the forehead, watching as he runs in, her heart filled with pride. Her son.

As he grows, so does her pride for him. He writes stories that his teachers pin on the wall and read out in asssembly, he joins the swim team, he makes friends. When he starts high school he says he would like to go by just ‘Ben’ now, rather than ‘Benjamin’. She still calls him by his full name, unused to the change. He doesn’t mind, not really, and wouldn’t dream of contradicting his mother.

When he is 18 he gets a place at university, and his mother tells all her friends for weeks, boasting about her son, her Ben, how proud she is. He gets a first, and she cries at his graduation ceremony.

When he gets paid for his first article he takes her out for dinner, paying for everything. She gets herself a new dress for the occasion and they joke all evening about how he is a man of the world now, how he will get his own family soon. She says she knows one day he will be the editor of his own newspaper and he blushes and pours her another glass of wine.

Six months before he dies, he starts to change. She thinks perhaps he has a new girlfriend, but doesn’t push the subject. He is quieter now, more withdrawn, but he still smiles and laughs with her, taking her out for dinner again. She’s his mother, however, and can notice. She spots how he deflects questions about articles he’s writing, how he avoids talking about work at all when before it was all he ever wanted to discuss.

It is a week before his birthday when she answers the door to a young woman with short blonde hair and a strange expression on her face. She collapses on her floor when she hears the news. Something inside of her breaks, and her body explodes with relentless sobs, like she has never cried before. The girl makes her tea, helps her into a chair, even through the tears forming in her own eyes.

He is buried with an award, he becomes Ben Kaplan  _DSO_ , a title she does not completely understand and they do not seem to be able to explain to her. They use the words ‘bravery’, ‘courage’, ‘dedication’ and her heart still swells with pride, even through her grief.

She dies three years later, a surprise heart attack. She goes calmly, bravely, dignified. Just like her son.


End file.
